birding-aus

A study of the conservation benefits of indigenous Australian land manag

To: "'John Weigel'" <>, <>
Subject: A study of the conservation benefits of indigenous Australian land manag
From: "Stephen Ambrose" <>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 10:11:12 +1000
>From a botanical perspective, the authors of the following article propose
that, contrary to widespread opinion, there is little evidence that plant
species in Mediterranean-type climates (e.g. south-western and south-eastern
Australia) do not have traits that are adapted to fire.

Bradshaw, S.D., Dixon, K.W., Hopper, S.D., Lambers, H & Turner, S.R. (2011).
Little evidence of fire-adapted plant traits in Mediterranean climate
regions. Trends in Plant Science: 16(2): 69-76.

A pdf copy of this paper can be downloaded from the following link provided
by one of the authors:
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/parker/bio821/papers/BradshawEtAlNoFireAdapt.pdf

It is important to note that this paper does not discuss adaptive traits of
plants in northern and central Australia, so their conclusions should not
necessarily be applied to plant species in those parts of the continent.

Kind regards,
Stephen

Stephen Ambrose
Ryde NSW


-----Original Message-----
From: Birding-Aus  On Behalf Of
John Weigel
Sent: Wednesday, 13 August 2014 8:58 AM
To: 
Subject: A study of the conservation benefits of indigenous
Australian land manag

G'day Laurie,

With the utmost respect, on this issue, I've got to take the other side of
this important conservation crisis, and suggest that if you haven't visited
Kakadu in the past five or six years, you might be in for a shock when you
next search for ground-dwelling fauna of any sort - particularly reptiles
and small mammals. It would be hard to find a burn scar less than 10-fold
the figure you have quoted. In fact, it can be a challenge to find an area
that size that HASN'T been burned in past few years. Instead of a 'mosaic'
approach based on allowing proper maturing of the rapidly receding spinifex
habitats to reach maturity, the current management process in Kakadu is to
apply 'mosaic' burns to any areas that have been spared far less time than
required to see return of complex ecologies including long-lived reptiles
(and presumably grass wrens). In short, the traditional burning by nomadic
tribes was not assisted by Cessna 'blanket' fire-drops, Toyotas and
automatic lighters. 



Content preview:  G?day Martin Are you suggesting that Aborigines haven?t
been
    lighting fires at Kakadu for thousands of years or that traditional
fires
    are hot burns? You might like to read the article. The point of the
article
    is that "Martu-set fires average about 10 acres -- a small fraction of
the
    size of fires ignited by lightning ... that patchy vegetation created by
   intentional fires reduce the likelihood of devastating, large blazes.?
[...]
    
 
 Content analysis details:   (-2.6 points, 5.0 required)
 
  pts rule name              description
 ---- ----------------------
--------------------------------------------------
 -0.0 RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE     RBL: Sender listed at http://www.dnswl.org/, no
                             trust
                             [211.29.132.249 listed in list.dnswl.org]
 -0.7 RP_MATCHES_RCVD        Envelope sender domain matches handover relay 
domain
 -1.9 BAYES_00               BODY: Bayes spam probability is 0 to 1%
                             [score: 0.0000]
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Mailman-Approved-At: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 17:32:30 -0400
Subject: A study of the conservation benefits of
        indigenous Australian land management practices
X-BeenThere: 
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15
Precedence: list

 
John Weigel AM
Australian Reptile Park
PO 737 Gosford NSW 2250
(02) 4340 1022

www.reptilepark.com.au
www.devilark.com.au
 



_______________________________________________
Birding-Aus mailing list

To change settings or unsubscribe visit:
http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org


_______________________________________________
Birding-Aus mailing list

To change settings or unsubscribe visit:
http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU